Theme
Conceptions of community were at the heart of inter- and post-war discourses of (re)construction, both in communist Eastern Europe and the democratic West.
Building on political and scientific discourses of community-building, and infused by the traumatic ruptures in (local) society during the Second World War, the idea of creating and sustaining social coherence became a shared consensus. At various levels, and referring to a variety of collectives, ‘community’ – Gemeinschaft, gemeenschap, communauté etc. – was perceived as imperative for stability, prosperity and welfare. This conference addresses the various discourses and conceptions of community in Europe in from the end of the First World War up until the late 1960s from a multilevel perspective – local, national and transnational – and through a focus on communicative practices. The latter refers to the embeddedness of community discourse in language, but also takes into account how this discourse is – performatively – acted out in social and politico-administrative practices.Continue reading CfP CONF (Re)constructing communities in Europe, 1918-1968. A venture into the discursive practices of community building Radboud University Nijmegen / Utrecht University – Soeterbeeck Study Center, 18.-20.12.2013. Deadline: 1.3.2012

The Conference – Colonial and Postcolonial Urban Planning in Africa – aims to re-examine the history of colonial urban planning in Africa and its legacies in the post-independence period, to learn from contemporary African scholarship, and to discuss how postcolonial urban planning cultures can actually address these urban challenges and contribute effectively for the development of resilient and sustainable cities in Africa.

The Conference, to be held in Lisbon, in September 2013, organized by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning – University of Lisbon and the International Planning History Society (IPHS), will explore two key themes in the history of urban planning in Africa:

A 4-day conference to be held at the University of Exeter, 18-21 April 2013

We are delighted to announce that three plenary speakers have already been confirmed:

Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics

Dolores Hayden, Professor of Architecture, Urbanism and American Studies at Yale University

Anders Stephanson, Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Professor of History at Columbia University

The conference will begin after lunch on Thursday 18th April and will close after lunch on Sunday 21st April.

American Studies at Exeter
American Studies has a long-standing presence at the University of Exeter. The research interests of staff include transatlantic literary relations, American criminality, film noir, the literature of the suburbs, the Hollywood blockbuster, US immigration, Seattle in the 1990s, the American musical, the culture of the American South, Irish American identities and literature, childhood in America, the Ku Klux Klan, and contemporary American comics. The University holds several major resources that are of interest to American Studies scholars, notably the American Music Collection (one of the largest archives of American popular music outside the United States) and the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture.

Exeter is located 12 miles from the sea, in the county of Devon, home to several Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Dartmoor National Park and the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site.

Call For Papers
There is no overarching theme to the conference, and papers and panel proposals are welcomed on any subject that falls under the remit of American Studies. We invite proposals from individuals and from other interest groups including associations linked to BAAS, such as the APG, BGEAH, BrANCH, and HOTCUS. Half a century after 1963, we invite proposals inspired by the events of that year and the tumultuous decade that followed. 2013 also represents the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and we welcome suggestions for related papers and panels.

Proposals for 20-minute presentations should be a maximum of 250 words and include a provisional title. Proposals by two or more people sharing a common theme are warmly invited and we welcome panels that cross disciplinary boundaries. The conference organisers hope to continue the initiative shown at previous BAAS Annual Conferences by scheduling roundtable discussions and innovative panel presentations, and we encourage such proposals as appropriate.

In 2013, the University of Exeter will be hosting the British Association of American Studies(BAAS) Conference from 18-21 April. Professor Dolores Hayden, author of _Building Suburbia: A Field Guide to Sprawl_ will be the keynote speaker, and the Cultures of the Suburbs Network will be hosting a panel on ‘Cultures of the American Suburbs’. If you would like to contribute a paper to this panel – from any discipline or period – then please send a proposal to suburbs@exeter.ac.uk using ‘BAAS Suburbs Panel’ in the subject line. Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2012.

The Leverhulme Trust funded Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network is a partnership between the Universities of Exeter and Kingston (UK), Witwatersrand (South Africa), Hofstra (USA), Griffith (Australia) and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

The Network aims to further the scholarly, professional and public understanding of the cultures of the modern (post-1900) suburbs through international and interdisciplinary research; to evaluate the place of cultural forms and practices in the suburbs, to explore the impact of cultural representations on the perceptions and practices of commentators and policymakers, and to investigate the importance of suburbanites’ own cultural engagement.

Visit the website at: http://suburbs.exeter.ac.uk
Contact us at suburbs@exeter.ac.uk and Follow us on Twitter @CulturesSuburbs.

For more details about the BAAS conference, visit http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/research/conferences/baas2013/

Call for Papers, Society for the History of Children and Youth, June 25-27, 2013

Conference Theme: “Space and Childhood in History”

The Sixth Biennial Conference of the Society for the History of Children and Youth will be held June 25-27, 2013, at the University of Nottingham in Great Britain.

The Program Committee invites scholars to submit proposals for formal panels, roundtable discussions, and research-in-progress workshops on any aspect of the histories of children and youth, from any place and in any era. But we are especially interested in sessions that examine and compare how space and childhood are mutually constitutive in historically and geographically specific settings. Our call, inspired by the French political philosopher Henri Lefebvre, posits that for any person, including children and youth, there is a dynamic rather than a static relationship between a physical place, its social make-up, and childhood as an ideal or imagined condition. The production of space, as Lefebvre famously insisted, happens in the physical world, the social world, and the imagined world. We ask scholars to investigate space not just as a backdrop for the lived experiences of children but as a tangible, social, and discursive construction, which shapes and is shaped by the lives and experiences of children. Although committee prefers proposals for complete sessions and panels that incorporate international representation and global perspectives, individual papers will also be considered.

Session guidelines
Sessions will last approximately 90 minutes. At least fifteen minutes should be reserved for audience discussion. This may mean fewer – or shorter – formal papers, entertaining comments from the audience rather than scheduling a formal commentator, etc.

Submitting proposals
In order to be considered for the program, proposals must be received no later than October 31, 2012. They should include the following information:

The following information for all participants:
1. Names and roles (paper-presenter, chair, discussant, etc.)
2. department and institution
3. address and e-mail address

250-word abstract for each paper

2-pp. CV for each participant

Please state what, if any, audio-visual technology will be required for each session or paper.

All parts of the proposal should be gathered into one PDF document and sent as an email attachment to james.marten@marquette.edu. The program committee will finalize decisions no later than January 31,
2013.

Direct queries to the co-chairs of the program committee:
James Marten, Marquette University, james.marten@marquette.edu
Marta Gutman, City College of New York, mgutman@ccny.cuny.edu

The other members of the committee are:
Margot Hillel, Australian Catholic University
Mary Clare Martin, University of Greenwich
Dirk Schumann, Universität Göttingen
Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado

During the second half of the twentieth century the towns and cities of Britain were transformed more extensively than at any period since the industrial revolution. Millions of people were moved from the centre of cities to new urban settlements in what Alison Ravetz called ‘the greatest internal migration in British history’; whole manufacturing industries and their associated communities and cultures, which had dominated much of urban Britain north of the Trent for two centuries, were swept away in a matter of decades; and the steady influx of peoples from the old empire and Europe created new community formations and ultimately a multicultural Britain which was also overwhelmingly urban. Britain’s towns and cities today are barely recognisable from the drab and damaged places that emerged from the Second World War.Continue reading CONF, CfP “The Transformation of Urban Britain since 1945”. University of Leicester, UK. 9./10.7.2013. Deadline: 1.2.2013